One of the factors that determines the success of a corporate organization is visibility of its brand in various media spaces. With the rapidly rising influence of social media networks, for example, such as Facebook® of Facebook, Inc., Twitter® of Twitter Inc., etc., on brand marketing, there is a need for comparing brands against their competitors to know how and where they stand among their competitors or peers in a social media space. Conventional benchmarking systems typically perform a brand comparison only based on the reach of the brand within the social media space. These conventional benchmarking systems often perform brand comparison for brands in disparate fields, unrelated industries, unrelated geographical areas, etc. A generic benchmarking system that compares brands in unrelated industries is often not useful since demographics of consumers, market forces, etc., that drive different industries are often different. Furthermore, brands in different industries, or brands concentrated in a particular geographical location often adopt different methods of social interaction. Therefore, there is a need for benchmarking brands against other brands that operate in the same social space.
Furthermore, conventional benchmarking systems do not take into account differences arising due to variations in geographical locations of the brand. Therefore, when a conventional benchmarking system generates benchmark scores for an entire industry, systemic high scores received by a brand in a particular geographical location often overpower systemic low scores received by the brand in another geographical location, resulting in a skewed combined industry score. For example, a brand for a cellular network provider may have a large market in a particular geographical location, and consequently a larger consumer base in that particular geographical location. Therefore, the brand may have a larger following on a social media source commonly used by consumers located in that particular geographical location. However, the brand may have to contend with multiple competing brands in a geographical location where the brand is yet to establish a sizeable market. Furthermore, consumers in the other geographical location may not be inclined to use a social media source for brand interaction. Therefore, a benchmark score generated for the brand in a particular geographical location may not be comparable with a benchmark score generated for the brand in a different geographical location.
Conventional benchmarking systems often generate a universal score that does not consider factors affected by a geographical location of the brand. Therefore, there is a need for a computer implemented method and system that benchmarks brands and generates benchmark scores specific to an industry related to the brand and its competitors and/or a geographical location at which the brands operate. Furthermore, since there is a wide variation among brands across different industries in a targeted market, demographics, brand messages, actual products, marketing strategies adopted by the brands, etc., there is a need for a computer implemented method and system that provides a focused benchmark score for a brand that is valid to a product and/or a service category for which the product and/or the service represented by the brand was developed, without comparing benchmark scores of two different industries.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a computer implemented method and system that benchmarks a brand based on social media strength of the brand relative to other competing brands operating in the same industry and/or the same geographical location as that of the brand.